Secrets & Lies (1996) Reviews & Ratings

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Secrets & Lies reviews

Secrets & Lies holds a 7.6/10 average from 755 TMDB ratings.

SECRETS AND LIES is a 1996 film by Mike Leigh that, appropriately enough, is concerned with the things that members of a family conceal from each other. Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a black woman in London who has made a successful career as an optician, knew from a young age that she was adopted, but only after her adopted mother's death does she decide to look up her birth mother. Hortense is shocked to find…
— CRCulver (8/10)

If I ever get around to drawing up a list of my top 25 favorite non-blockbuster movies, Secrets and Lies would roll in very near the top. I have watched it a few times and expect I will continue to do so periodically. The acting is phenomenal. It is an ensemble cast, for sure, no superstars, but three of the main actors: Timothy Spall, Brenda Blethyn and Claire Rushbrook, are among the best that Great Britain has pr…
— Peter McGinn (10/10)

**A good work, currently forgotten.** Just when I think I've seen all sorts of movies about racism, issues of race or prejudice, there's something new that comes out of nowhere, or some meritorious, well-made effort that's worth seeing. This film, initially, seemed to me just a sweet and average drama in which a black woman, very successful, decides to discover the identity of her biological mother and discovers tha…
— Filipe Manuel Neto (6/10)

After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense, a successful black optometrist, seeks out her birth mother. She's shocked when her research leads her to Cynthia, a working class white woman.

Movies like Secrets & Lies

If you enjoyed Secrets & Lies, these movies have a similar feel:

• A Home of Our Own (1993)
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• Philomena (2013)
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